To:F. E. DZERZHINSKY[1]

Written:Written on May 19, 1922Published:First published in 1965 inCollected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 54.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1976,

      Moscow,Volume 45,

      pages555-556a.Translated:Yuri SdobnikovTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet ArchiveYou may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

ComradeDzerzhinsky:

Onthe question of deporting the writers and professors
helping the counter-revolution.

Thisneeds more thorough preparation. Without it we
shall make mistakes. Please discuss these measures of
preparation.

Galla conference of Messing, Mantsev and some other
persons in Moscow.

Putthe duty on the Politbureau members to devote 2–3 
hours a week to looking through a number of periodicals
and books,verifyingexecution,demanding reviews in
writing, and securing the dispatch to Moscow of all
non-communist publications without delay.

Addto this the reviews by a number of Communist
writers (Steklov, Olminsky, Skvortsov, Bukharin, etc.).

Collectsystematicinformation about the political
record, work and literary activity of the professors and
writers.

Assignall this to an intelligent, educated and scrupulous
man at theG.P.U.

Myopinion on the two Petrograd publications:

NovayaRossiyaNo. 2.[2]Closed down by the Petrograd
comrades.

Perhapsit has been closed down too early? Circulate
it to thePolitbureaumembers and discussmore thoroughly.
What is its editorLezhnev? Is he fromDyen? Could
information about him be collected? Of course,not allthe
people working on the magazine are candidates for
deportation.[3]

ThePetrograd magazineEkonomist, published by the
XIth Department of the Russian Technical Society, is
another
matter.[4]I think this is clearly a whiteguard centre.
Its No. 3 (onlyNo. 3!!! thisnota bene!) carries a list of
its members on the cover. These, I think, arealmost allthe most legitimate candidates for deportation.

Theseare all patent counter-revolutionaries, accomplices
of the Entente, an organisation of its servitors and spies
and corrupters of the student youth. We should makearrangements to have these “military spies” caught and once
caught constantly and systematically and deported.

Pleaseshow this confidentially, without making any
copies, to thePolitbureaumembers,returning it to you
and to me, and inform me of their opinion and your
conclusion.

[1]Writtenin connection with preparations for deporting
anti-Soviet-minded intellectuals.

[2]NovayaRossiya(New Russia)—a socio-literary and scientific
monthly inclining to theSmena Vekhtrend (see Note 415);
published from 1922 to 1926 under the editorship of I. G. Lezhnev;
the first two issues appeared in Petrograd in March and June
1922. Subsequently, from August 1922, it was published in
Moscow under the titleRossiya. See next note.

[3]Havingexamined on May 26, 1922, on Lenin’s proposal, the
question of the journalNovaya Rossiya, the Politbureau of the
R.C.P.(B.) C.C. instructed the Central Press Board “as the
highest instance to permit the further publication of the journalNovaya Rossiya, rescinding the decision of the Petrograd
Executive Committee on its closure” (Central Party Archives of the
Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the C.P.S.U. Central Committee).

Dyen(Day)—bourgeois literary daily; published in St. 
Petersburg from 1912. Among those participating in its publication
were Menshevik-liquidators, who secured full control after the
bourgeois-democratic revolution in February 1917. It was closed
clown by the Revolutionary Military Committee of the
Petrograd Soviet on October 26 (November 8), 1917.

[4]Ekonomist—a journal of the industrial and economic department
of the Russian Technical Society, whose membership consisted
of bourgeois technical intellectuals hostile to the Soviet power
and former owners of enterprises. It was published in Petrograd
from December 1921. In his article “On the Significance of
Militant Materialism”, Lenin called the journal “an organ of
modern feudalists” (see present edition, Vol. 33, pp. 227–36).
In June 1922, the journal was closed down.